Gig Worker Safety: The Numbers That Exist, and the Hole Where the Rest Should Be

The measurement problem is the story

Start with the thing most articles on this subject skip. If you are a rideshare driver, a courier, a warehouse contractor or a task-platform worker in the United States, and you are hurt at work but not killed, there is a good chance no national statistic will ever record it.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics runs two separate systems. The Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI) counts deaths, and it does include the self-employed — 888 of the 5,070 fatal work injuries recorded in 2024 were to self-employed workers. The Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses (SOII) counts non-fatal cases, and it does not. BLS states the exclusion in its own scope documentation: the survey excludes nonfatal work injuries and illnesses to the self-employed, to workers on farms with 10 or fewer employees, to private household workers, to volunteers, and to federal government workers.

The consequence is precise and worth stating carefully. Independent contractors are counted when they die and largely uncounted when they are hurt. Any figure claiming a gig-vs-employee injury-rate comparison is therefore constructed from data that does not contain one side of the comparison. We have not found a credible one, and we do not publish one here.

Australia has the same shape of gap for a different reason: Safe Work Australia's compensation-based statistics under-represent the self-employed because workers' compensation schemes generally do not cover them, and the rate denominators only count workers who are eligible for cover in the first place.

How many gig workers there are — and why nobody can tell you precisely

The honest answer is that the United States does not have a reliable published count of app-based platform workers, and the reason is documented by BLS itself.

BLS added four questions on electronically mediated work — short jobs or tasks found through an app that also arranges payment — to the May 2017 Contingent Worker Supplement. It later determined that those questions did not work as intended, producing a large number of incorrect "yes" answers, and had to recode the data by hand from confidential microdata. The July 2023 supplement included revised digital-platform questions, but BLS held those estimates back from the November 2024 news release, saying it intended to publish them separately.

What BLS did publish for July 2023 is a count of independent contractors: 11.9 million people, 7.4% of total employment. That is a different and broader thing than platform work — it includes the self-employed plumber and the freelance designer alongside the courier — and it should not be quoted as a gig-economy headcount.

This is why figures like "7.5 million gig workers" circulate without a traceable source. If a number in this space does not name a specific agency release and a specific reference period, treat it as unsourced.

What the fatality data does show: the road is the hazard

Where the data is strong, it is strong in one direction. Transportation is where working people die, and gig work is disproportionately transportation.

In the United States in 2024, transportation incidents were again the most frequent fatal event, accounting for 1,937 deaths — 38.2% of all occupational fatalities. Transportation and material moving occupations were the occupational group with the most fatalities, at 1,391, itself a 7.0% decrease on 2023.

Australia's pattern is the same. Safe Work Australia recorded 188 worker deaths from traumatic injury in 2024, a rate of 1.3 per 100,000 workers; vehicle incidents were the leading mechanism at 79 deaths, 42% of the total.

In Great Britain, being struck by a moving vehicle accounted for an average of 22 deaths a year across 2021/22–2025/26 — about 17% of worker fatalities overall — but 30% of deaths in transportation and storage and 48% in waste and recycling.

Self-employed workers die at about three times the employee rate in Britain

Great Britain publishes the one cut that speaks most directly to gig work, because it splits worker deaths by employment status.

HSE recorded 126 workers killed in work-related accidents in 2025/26 (provisional), the lowest single-year figure outside the pandemic-affected years. Around a third of those deaths were to self-employed workers — even though the self-employed make up around 15% of the workforce. Across the five years 2021/22–2025/26, HSE puts the overall fatal injury rate for self-employed workers at around three times the employee rate, and notes that the rate is generally higher for the self-employed than for employees across all the main industry sectors.

HSE is careful about why, and so are we. Much of the gap reflects where self-employment is concentrated — agriculture, forestry and fishing, and construction, both high-hazard sectors. But HSE's own finding is that a gap remains even within industry sectors. Being your own employer is not, on this evidence, a neutral variable.

One further point that matters for anyone reading this as a gig worker rather than as an employer: HSE states that health and safety law may not apply to a self-employed person in the same way, and directs the self-employed to check their own position. If you are classified as a contractor, the legal duty to keep you safe may not sit with anyone but you.

Violence, cash, and the hours the work happens in

Fatal violence at work is a smaller category than transport, but it is not small. In the United States in 2024, violence and other injuries by persons or animals accounted for 733 deaths: 470 homicides (up from 458 in 2023) and 263 suicides (down from 281). Shooting by another person accounted for 379 of those deaths.

What makes this relevant to gig and contractor work is not a headline number — it is the risk profile regulators describe. HSE's guidance for employers of lone workers lists the key workplace violence risks explicitly: working in locations with a known high risk of violence; late evening or early morning work when there are fewer workers around; holding a position of authority over customers; alcohol and drug use by members of the public the worker deals with; and carrying money or valuable equipment.

Read that list against a courier's evening shift or a rideshare driver's night, and the overlap is close to total. HSE also says something that no amount of individual precaution can fix: lone working does not automatically imply a higher risk of violence, but it does make workers more vulnerable, because the lack of nearby support means a lone worker may be less able to prevent an incident from occurring.

What a daily check-in does, and what it does not

None of the data above is an argument for an app, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. A check-in does not make a junction safer, does not fix a classification, does not provide insurance, and does not summon help.

It does one narrow thing. If nobody is scheduled to notice that your shift ended and you never got home, a daily check-in makes someone notice. That is the gap the regulators themselves point at: HSE tells employers to implement a robust system to ensure a lone worker has returned to their base or home once their work is completed, and Australia's model WHS Regulations require a person conducting a business to have systems for effective communication with remote or isolated workers. Those duties fall on employers. If you are a contractor, they may not fall on anyone — which is exactly why some contractors set the equivalent up for themselves.

We are careful about the claim: we shorten the time before someone notices. We do not shorten the emergency.

I'm Alive is a daily check-in app. You confirm you're okay once a day; if you don't, the people you chose are told, with your location. The daily check-in is free (Try It, $0) and works on iPhone and Android anywhere in the world. Automatic alerts to your contacts start on Protect Me ($29.99/year), with location on the move on Protect Me On The Move ($39.99/year); there is a one-time Stay Connected lifetime upgrade at $4.99. Check-first phone fall detection is live on iPhone only (app v2.3.1) on Protect Me and above, stays off until you switch it on, and only runs while the app is open — it is not background detection. It alerts your own trusted contacts; it never calls emergency services, and it is best-effort, not a medical device. There is no Android fall detection and no Apple Watch fall detection. The app interface is currently in English only. It is a consumer app: it is not a certified lone-worker safety system, there is no 24/7 monitoring centre behind it, and using it does not discharge an employer's legal duties.